As most people are more aware of the appearance of the song in the film version (well described above by ArsDuo) rather than the play, I've done some research about how it is used there.

In Act I of the musical, the Master of Ceremonies of the Kit Kat Club comes out on stage with a record player and starts losing himself in the song a boy soprano is singing. At the end, the Master of Ceremonies turns off the music and announces "To me!"

The song is reprised as the finale of Act I at Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz's engagement party. Herr Ludwig arrives late, and is quite pleasant to Schultz. When Ludwig removes his coat, his Nazi armband is seen. Cliff gets angry, and Fraulein Kost lets slip that Herr Schultz is a Jew. Ludwig tries to leave. Kost stops him, and leads him and almost the whole party in the song.

The date was significant for me, however, for an entirely different reason. I was very, very pregnant. This was my first (and as it later turned out, only) child.

Being summer, my husband was very busy -- he was a farmer at the time, and the harvest had just started. Mobile phones may have been available, but they weren't in common use, so my mother was staying with us, to ensure that I had the means to get to the hospital if it was urgent.

I started feeling labour pains early on in the day, and by three o'clock, they were strong and close together. Mum bundled me into the car, called Nicholas, and started to drive me to the hospital. On the way I called out "Wait!" and insisted that she stop so I could vote -- I can't remember what threats I used, but they were effective. Mum wasn't happy about it, at all, not least because she wasn't able to vote in my constituency and she and I vote in opposite directions, but I was a very politically aware young woman, and very determined (Some people call me stubborn, and it really isn't a good idea to try to deflect me when I have my mind set on something). She stopped, I voted, and we went on our way.

As it turned out, it was anything but a quick labour, and one of my overriding memories of that night is watching the coverage of the election, as I waited to go to the delivery room. It soon became apparent that the Tories, who I had adamantly voted against, were going to win a landslide victory, something that did nothing to reduce my already extreme pain.

A British tradition, on election night, is to have a satirical comedy programme on, just before coverage turns over excusively to progress reports on the voting. In 1987, it was Spitting Image, and burned into my memory, bright and clear, is the close of that programme, where puppets of the Tory Cabinet stood, dressed in the uniform of the Hitler Jugend, exactly like the film of "Cabaret, and bellowed out "Tomorrow belongs to me". You had to laugh or cry.

Having spent most of my adult life in Hollywood, in the employ of those who would serve up violence, drugs and sex as mere commodities to be consumed, like burgers and fries, by a well-sold, voracious, and not-particularly-thoughtful public, I have growing concern about what I might call the resultant coarsening of American society, not to mention the obvious and well-documented dumbing-down.

When our kids are born, we can't take our eyes off of them. They're cute, and they look just enough like us that we become immediately infatuated, as though we were looking into magic mirrors. But after a while, given enough sleepless nights, dirty diapers, broken dishes, spilled milk and temper tantrums in shopping malls, upon innumerable conversations with equally-exhausted worn-down parents, eventually we give our precious love-bundles over to the system. They go to school, and as children are hard-wired to do, they begin teaching themselves at a fearsome pace.

And the stuff they learn is often dangerous. Primarily because it is basically unmoderated. Kids consume raw data rapaciously: a million murders in Prime Time. How, when and who to fuck. A pill for this, a tab for that. Feel better. Look better. Get rich. Win.

No value judgements here. Just an observation.

As parents of young teenagers, Demeter and I have occasion (usually sleep-deprived) to compare notes. She's got a girl; I've got one of the other kind. She passed along to me the following, and it reminded me again that